Magical operas: Magic Flute and Rhinegold

It is significant that three of my favourite - the most enduringly interesting, as a whole - operas should share an archetypal and 'Jungian' feel. These are Mozart's The Magic Flue [I mean Flute]; Wagner's Das Rhinegold (Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage is another, albeit musically inferior*). 

Perhaps this is because these are dramatically (situationally, as regards plot) is as high as opera can reach as an art form? 

After all, most operas are dramatic contrivances to produces scenes of strong and essentially 'populist' emotion - love at first sight, a love affair or the start of a marriage, the misery of broken love, pathos at loss, anger and vengefulness. Perhaps Verdi did this better than anyone - and his operas are composed of primary colours, black and white. 

It is the music which sometimes (and there are very few really successful operas - a couple of dozen perhaps) raises an opera above farce and melodrama and sometimes to sublimity. The plots of Mozart's Da Ponte-written operas -The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and (especially) Cosi Fan Tutte - are essentially horrible, shallow, facetious comedies of manners; which I would find intolerable as plays. It is the music of Mozart which raises these stock situations to the Heavens. 

The Magic Flute is my favourite opera, perhaps my favourite music. And this has to do with the fairy tale and archetypal aspects; but also the Masonic symbolism. Now, of course, Freemasonry is ultimately an enemy of Christianity and indeed probably an instrument of strategic evil. Yet here it is, structuring perhaps the greatest music ever written!

This is not uncommon in the arts; including the arts of genius. We are all sinners, including geniuses; and the greatest human creations are tainted with sin. But it is not the sin tow which we most deeply respond in the music of the Magic Flute - it is the Good. 

Because, after all, all evil contains some Good - and early Freemasonry (at the time and place of Mozart) had many good aspects - which rendered it a suitable and effective vehicle for the Magic Flute.  

Das Rhinegold has an extraordinary grandeur and symmetry - really marvelous orchestral writing and effects; and in general Rhinegold is a convincing and enchanting example of world building in opera. 

We feel we are inside the Teutonic legends - living in the heightened reality of gods, nymphs, dwarves, giants - indeed I merely need to think about the opera to get a halo effect on my lived experience. 

Yet, the 'message' of the work is again dubious. The plot is permeated with deception, greed, resentment, lust... and these are not really balanced by any great Goodness or nobility of purpose. It is, of course, the music - and not so much the singing (which is pretty arbitrary) but the orchestral part of the score - that makes the difference. 

In opera it is the music - not the play - which may reach the heights; and the music which can go beyond both the limitations and the explicit intentions of the composer. 

The lesson can be applied to other art forms, and other periods - even nowadays when the evil intent of art, literature and even music is very evident. 

When any artist (and artists nowadays are almost-never genuises, not even minor ones) taps into genuine creativity - he expresses the divine. Which is why there is good that may (with proper intent) be derived even from evil works - and most works (and all modern works) have a far greater admixture of evil than these three operas. 

* The Midsummer Marriage by Michael Tippett is another symbolic and magical opera - indeed, probably the last such to be written in a way that is (just about!) potentially accessible to the intelligent layman (rather than the professional musician). 

While the Wagner and Mozart are susceptible to Jungian analysis (as performed by Robert Donington) - Tippet actually wrote his opera from an explicit and deliberate Jungian schema.  

I would have to regard this Jungian schema as ultimately evil! - because it regards good and evil as light and dark sides of a personality; and aims not to acknowledge and repent sin, but it integrate it in the 'whole' Man. 

Yet, there is enough positive value in Jung to make it an effective basis for a Good opera. In particular - it addresses the problems of alienation and divided mind (the mundane and the enchanted worlds, materialism and spiritual); and the protagonists attain a kind of healing which is a positive outcome. 

With the Midsummer Marriage it is the music which (in parts of the score) raises the whole to greater heights than its flawed plot, clumsy language and (mostly) unmelodic vocal writing; and even than its explicit (wrong) intent. And, as with Rhinegold, it is the orchestra (not the singers) that has most of the musical good stuff.  

Music as Life?

In the first three years I was at medical school I spent much of each day learning to be a doctor; but my other major activity was music - mainly classical, but some folk. 

At times it was almost as if I lived 'in' music. It was not just that I listened (with intense attention) to a great deal of music; and sang in Gilbert and Sullivan shows and two choirs (one large, the other of twelve singers) -- but more than this, I was seeking something spiritually absorbing from music. 

In a way, I was expecting to find in music some-thing that would be the main thing in life; would 'solve' the problems of life. 

When I was working on learning something like Beethoven's Piano Concertos, or Sonatas; Bach performed by Glenn Gould; Wagner's Ring operas; Richard Strauss's tone poems; or the works of Michael Tippett (which was as modern as I got) -- I was seeking for something that I felt lacking.

Several times, I seemed to be close to getting it. For example; the four consecutive days spent listing to The Ring while reading the musical scores - and talking or reading about The Ring when I was not listening - were so intense and immersive that the effect lasted for weeks. I seemed to be (wanted to be) living inside Wagner's world, and everything reminded me of some aspect.    

Or the music of Michael Tippet (by my evaluation, the best living English composer) which began with buying his Double String Concerto (as an accidental pairing with Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia), then reading his Moving Into Aquarius essays (found in a shop in Athens!); and ended with being taken through everything of his that had been recorded up to 1980 by a music-student friend who had also known Tippett somewhat, since he was a neighbour in Wiltshire. 

The culmination was meeting Tippett himself, outside his house, to hand over a 75th Birthday card; and again at the birthday concert in his honour - at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. 

As I came back from this concert on the train, travelling from midnight to 05:00 (to attend ward rounds the next morning); while reading the newly published short biography and analysis by David Matthews -- the combination of excitement and lack of sleep probably raised my 'life in music' to about as high and sustained a level as was possible... 

Which was not all that complete or sustained - if 'life' was the true objective! Music never quite delivered on my hopes, even at its best; and I always felt the need for other things - my medical work, literature, and (of course) human society. Yet even when all this were put-together, it did not answer. Always there was a lack - hence the continual hoping and searching. 

While it is true that I continued to pin (unrealistically) great hopes on music for another several years (one way or another) - as much for lack of any better alternative as because the life-strategy was working well - I never reached so broad and deep an involvement as at around that time.

Looking back I regard my quest in music as a recapitulation of something that happened more generally in post-Christian Western society - the impulse of non-Christian Romanticism which sought to replace and supersede religion with art. This is the core meaning of 'art of art's sake'. 

Beethoven or Wagner could serve as good musical examples - not least because towards the end of his life Wagner  

Beatrix Potter stories with songs on EP (vinyl) and songs by Cyril Ornadel

Perhaps the favourite records of our small collection of vinyl as young children were the HMV versions of Beatrix Potter's stories with superb songs. There was inspired music by Cyril Ornadel and first-rate lyrics by David Croft; and were narrated by Vivien Leigh. 

Everything about these EP records is still perfectly memorable (both tunes and words) several decades later. 

(EPs were 'extended play' records; they looked like singles, and spun at 45 revolutions per minute like a single, but each side lasted about twice as long as a single - presumably at the cost of lower sound quality, although that was not evident on the kind of record player we possessed!)  

In Squirrel Nutkin there is the immortal 'I've got a tail' sung by Nutkin/ Graham Stark - which often pops into my head whenever the subject of 'tails' comes-up. Also Nutkin's strange 'riddles' - which are of the same type as those in the Hobbit - and come to mind on country walks. 

Or Old Mr Brown (the owl) and his recipe song 'Take one mole...' which has very amusing lyrics (as might be expected from the co-author of Dad's Army). It was always a scare when kindly Old Brown was provoked into attacking Nutkin, and inflicting the the 'karmic' punishment of biting-off most of the tail about which Nutkin had been so conceited. 

There were six stories in the collection - and we had all of them. The dark side of Beatrix Potter's world is nearly always evident, with the cute characters in danger of being caught and eaten by predators - whether sly or stupid. Still, as with all the best stories, 'All's well that ends well'. 

All the Tales, except Mrs Tiggy Winkle, therefore have sinister aspects which used to frighten me (still do!); such as the cat in Johnny Town Mouse, and Mr Macgregor the gardener in Peter Rabbit and the Flopsy Bunnies. 

Perhaps the most chilling was Jemima Puddle Duck; with the annoyingly foolish Jemima ('a simpleton') being seduced (almost to her death) by the kind-seeming, seductive foxy gentleman (who ambiguously sings 'I'll have you for dinner'). This tale features a virtuoso performance of Jemima by the famous Cicely Courtneidge. 

As a kid aged about four, I was particularly impressed by her song 'I can fly'; which gave instructions on how-to-do-it. Naturally, I went outside to try this for myself - I can still picture the incident. In the event, I didn't manage to fly - but did not give up hope.

The special appeal of Mrs Tiggy Winkle was much related to the thrillingly-magical final comments when the author tells us that the story was real, where it all happened, and that she is herself 'very well acquainted' with Mrs TW.  

Nowadays, this comes to mind whenever I look out on 'Owl Island' on Derwentwater, across at Cat Bells mountain, or pass through the delightful village where Lucy lived. 

Owl (St Herbert's) Island by Keswick

The 'impossible' tenor high F (above high C) in Bellini's The Puritans

 

I first heard this aria sung, as above, by Luciano Pavarotti - and this is, for me, the greatest performance overall. But the role was clearly Not written for a tenor of Pavarotti's type - with such a full, ringing and loud voice. (This is indeed known from multiple other sources of evidence.) 

Therefore, despite that Pavarotti sings every other note with his usual, perfectly even and glorious tone, he cannot reach the high F without switching to a falsetto (head-voice) voice production which marks a qualitative break in tonal quality. The run-in to this note is from 4:25. He does the high F beautifully - yet it sounds like someone else is singing that particular note. 

Pavarotti had probably the best high C of any full-voiced Italianate tenor - and what is more he possessed equally fine high C-sharp and even D - as may be heard in this aria; yet there are extremely few tenors of his type that can manage these notes using the same mode of vocal production as the high C. 

But the high F is three semitone above D - and that is a long way when singers are being judged by exact standards - and way beyond what any big-voiced tenor could produce in his normal vocal tone. 

You can hear this from a compilation of recordings of this notorious note - which is, I think, by far the highest note in the mainstream operatic tenor repertoire - since it is very seldom any tenor is required to go above high C at most - and that only once or twice per opera. 

Ignore the drivel in the comments! - What you can hear is that any tenor who has the kind of loud, ringing tone of a Pavarotti - someone like Gedda - must change to a qualitatively different tone for the high F. 

This is because all tenors have a 'break' in the voice, above which the tone must become falsetto; this break can be raised by training - but it is because of this that full-voiced tenors will sometimes 'crack' on high notes. This is like a yodel, and for the same reason - the voice suddenly, but uncontrolled because accidentally, flips into falsetto. 

(Yodeling is a controlled flipping back and forth between falsetto and the ordinary voice.) 

So, is the high F 'impossible'? 

There are tenors who, instead of having an abrupt break, gradually introduce more and more falsetto - their voice gradually and evenly changes from normal to falsetto as the notes get higher. (I have a friend with a naturally deep and sweet-toned voice, who does this spontaneously - and who has been able successfully to sing bass, baritone and tenor roles in Gilbert and Sullivan!) For such tenors, this high F may have more, or less, falsetto according to how high the break occurs. Some tenors have a very high break, and therefore the high F has less falsetto. 

However, these tenors invariably have a 'lighter', quieter and less ringing kind of tenor voice than the likes of Pavarotti and Gedda (or other greats of Italian Opera such as Caruso or Gigli) - they are, in essence, a different kind of voice (leggiero or tenore de grazia are some of the terms) - and such tenors are nowadays most often seen in Rossini, because only lighter voices can manage rapid coloratura (decorative passages of many quick notes). Luigi Alva was of this type.    

It seems certain that Bellini was writing for a just this type of leggiero, ligh-voliced singer, who used falsetto-flavoured production for the high notes. However, the tenor plays a man in nearly all operas, what is more the hero; and so he needs to sound masculine in vocal quality. 

This need for a heroic quality can be a problem for most high-voiced tenors, including who can best manage the high F with the minimum of falsetto. For perfection, the tenor should be able to integrate the high F with the whole of the rest of his voice - so that there is a completely-seamless transition in vocal quality. 

An example of musically-desirable seamless integration is Bruce Brewer (from 4:20):

However; Brewer sounds too-much like a female contralto - and not at all heroic!

So there is a problem. In a purist and strictly musical sense the tenor role in The Puritans must be a trade-off between heroic qualities in the voice, including the capacity to produce thrilling - rather than merely sweet - top notes; and the ability to sing the highest notes without a break in the voice. And, realistically, this can only be done by sacrificing the high F! - i.e. by singing it in (more or less) the different falsetto tone, as done by Pavarotti and Gedda. 

Or else there ill be a 'compromise' between heroic qualities and the vocal production. To my ear, an example of a good compromise is William Matteuzzi (who is also included in the compilation video above). Start at 3:20 - but the high F comes shortly after 4:25.

Matteuzzi - who I only recently discovered - was a very remarkable singer in many ways, although he never made it 'to the top' for whatever reason (e.g. he seems to be a poor actor and to lack charisma, in the YouTube examples I have found). 

His voice is light but it has that thrilling, masculine 'ring' (sometimes termed squillo) which is so valued by opera-goers - especially in the hero tenor roles. And this includes his highest notes which, although they are flavoured with falsetto production, have a genuinely heroic and exciting quality. 

His high F is very nearly, albeit not quite, tonally-integrated with the rest of his range - but as soon as he steps down one, then two, notes down from the F (E-flat, D-flat), his full 'normal' thrilling tone returns - and the effect of this passage of three notes is excellent. 

In the end, I would be forced to say that Bellini made a mistake by including the high F in this role - because it is actually impossible to sing in a wholly-satisfactory way. But it has certainly led to a lot of enjoyable fun and games for tenors trying to cope with it - one way or another.   

Folk song, dance and music - and Romanticism

Folk song, dance and music are a product of Romanticism, including the Romantic Nationalism which swept Europe in the 19th century. That is, Folk is a modern concept for something that was not previously a distinct category. 

(It being, presumably, whatever ordinary people, however defined; would do, in whatever time and place; in terms of singing, dancing and playing music.) 

But it was of great potency because - by means of Folk - a modern person could (for a while, to some extent) feel and experience that deep and Original Participation by which we were vertically rooted-in a spirit of people, and horizontally connected directly with other people. 

This was (originally) spontaneous and unconscious. What was once just a 'part of life' became for modern people something consciously chosen, learned, 'performed'. It still 'worked' (for a while) but must be sought and worked-on.  

But for people like me it was potent; because from adolescence the modern Man feels himself being crushed by the The System - and all meaning, purpose and participation being squeezed out of life. Folk represents a way of re-introducing some of these. 

As such, Folk had great importance to me in the mid teens of my life. It was a dream, but it could be a living-dream. 

Some of my best memories of those days are myself playing and singing folk music (often for myself, also performing a little), attending folk clubs and concerts, and especially dancing in Barn Dances/ Ceilidhs. Actually doing these dances could create a feeling of being a part of something bigger and more deeply rooted than normal life. 

These gave me a taste of participation - I felt (for a while, to some extent) a part of the world, a part of 'a people'. 

Yet I get a distinct impression that such feelings are both weaker and less common since the millennium transition (which seems to have been a further stage in the evolution of consciousness away-from the possibility of spontaneous and unconscious participation). 

Folk is now both less widespread, and more professional - hence more Ahrimanic and more a part of The System. 

Folk music always had politically-motivated nationalists and communists who tried to politicize it by equating 'the folk' with (for example) the Irish 'struggle' for 'freedom' or the Marxist 'proletariat'. As with all institutions; this surface and social aspect spread with the New Left victimology of women, races, sexuality etc. 

The consequent politics of resentment goes exactly counter to the Romantic participation which was originally sought from this music; it reduces the magic to the mundane. 

But what were we, what was I, supposed to do with Romantic Folk experiences? 

What actually happened was either that people tried and failed to return 'society' (as a whole) to the Folk-type, to an 'organic community', to Medieval-style villages or idealistic self-sufficient communes... To a neo-pagan inspired (intended to be) unconscious and spontaneous 'original' participation in living nature. 

This was the failed aspect of the post-war counter-culture - the deepest aspirations of both 'beats' and 'hippies' which got left-behind as all their agenda items were stripped of Romance, filleted into bureaucratic bullet-points, and embodied into managed systems.  

I think what we were supposed to do is to bring the Romantic Folk experience into conscious spiritual thinking; that is, retaining its Romantic power (based on the assumption that all of nature (including human society) is alive and a makes a continuum of direct knowing from-which we gradually separated-out, but to which we may return in our thinking. 

Nowadays this may not involve current experience of Folk singing, music or dancing - because such phenomena have been dwindling in power and popularity - even before in 2020 they were all suppressed and forbidden (for lying, 'healthist' fake-reasons).

Any (legal) future for such Folk activity seems to be one in which these activities are all closely-monitored and tightly-regulated as fully-assimilated System manifestations. 

So, what is required is that we each do for our-selves what we previously relied-upon live and communal singing, music and dance to do for us. 

The Romantic moves from the public and social realm to the private and conscious realm - and Folk (as part of the Romantic) likewise.

We are called-upon to be actively-creative in our own thinking - getting what assistance where and how we may; but ultimately engaging in a direct participation with creation. Any memories of past Folk experiences (or the Romantic essence thereof) can seamlessly be integrated into this spiritual activity.  

Instead of aiming to embody these Folk ideals into this mortal and transitory world, we should refocus on preparing our-selves for the immortal and permanent inclusion of the essence of Folk into the post-mortal and Heavenly world. 

Bach BWV 530 transcribed by The Herschel Trio

 

Bach Trio Sonata for treble recorder, treble viol and harpsichord, played by The Herschel* Trio. This piece begins at 48:17. 

This is a transcription of one of my absolute favourite pieces of music - the Vivace (first movement) from JS Bach's G Major Trio Sonata for Organ BWV 530. The whole thing is pure delight - but the three extended descending sequences are so absolutely delicious as to bring tears to the eyes. (The first of these begins at 49:09).

In the first version of this sequence the recorder does rapid semi-quavers while the viol does triplet quavers in syncopated support with the bass note coming on the first beat. The second sequence switches the lines with triplets in the recorder and semi-quavers on the viol. And the third sequence has both recorder and viol playing semi-quavers in mirror movement, with the bass note coming on the third ('off') beat.  

If you want to take a look at how the music 'works' - then the first part of this scrolling version of the original organ piece is very useful. 

If you want to watch the music being played (especially the bass line - articulated in beige socks...) then try this one:

*William Herschel started as a musician (composer, conducter, violinist) and for a while led the Durham militia band and Charles Avison's Newcastle Orchestra in my part of England. He then switched his efforts towards astronomy where he managed to discover Uranus, infrared, various planetary moons and much other stuff; to become the third most influential astronomer in history (ranked after Galileo and Kepler - according to Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment). Talented chap... 

Wunderbar Wunderlich!

Following yesterday's musical offering, here is Fritz Wunderlich again; in the deservedly famous 'Handel's Largo' aria

What makes Wunderlich's a supreme voice for me is the combination of thrilling masculine tone and strength, with an underlying pathos, an earnest quality. This was, no doubt, partly due to his youth - he died at only 35 years old (due to an accident - falling down stairs), which is barely reaching maturity for a male singer.

Technically, Wunderlich was noted for his breath control, giving him the ability to sing long phrases and (this is much more difficult than might be imagined) to increase or decrease volume while holding a high note - without either going-off that note (losing intonation) or breaking the continuity of vibrato.

This is shown to great effect in the notoriously tricky Il Mio Tesoro from Mozart's Don Giovanni, sung live. Listen for the long, single breath passages with rapid runs up and down the scale.

This aria demonstrates the 'heroic' quality of Wunderlich's voice - which is unusual in this type of lyric tenor.

Being a live performance; Wunderlich snatches very quick breath in the middle of the very longest passage, which enables him to slow down and expand the last part of it.

Below is have a studio recording of the same aria, sung in German translation, in which he sings the phrase right through with no trouble at all - but this is usually not possible in live performance where the singer is often tired by the stage movements and acting.

If you are impatient to hear it, jump straight to 1:45. It makes me feel a bit faint just listening...

"Ich baue ganz auf deiner Starke..."The heights of Mozart's artistry revealed by Fritz Wunderlich and Eugen Jochum

Mozart is widely known as one of the greatest of composers, yet there is a sense in which his genius is the most elusive and delicate. His greatest compositions hover very close to the trite and banal - and for much of the 19th century he was regarded as a tuneful, decorative but essentially 'light' composer - rather as moderns might regard Telemann, JC or CPE Bach (sons of JS) or Mendelssohn. 

It was due to the work of several critical champions such as GB Shaw and Alfred (not Albert) Einstein, and the work of some great conductors, that people began to see the lucid depths of Mozart - and for the late 20th century this was nailed-into-place by Peter Schaffer's Amadeus play and movie, which captured exactly this special quality (albeit marred by excessive plot emphasis on the sub-par and not-wholly-Mozartian Requiem). 

Anyway... all this is a prelude to the above tenor aria from Mozart's singspiel opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (aka 'Seraglio') - The Escape from the Harem. 

To appreciate this requires no knowledge of the opera, nor even of the words being sung - indeed, it is a ludicrously long (over six minutes!) and elaborate solo aria for a comic opera, with a complex orchestral introduction - and is therefore nearly always omitted or severely truncated in performance - and indeed in many recordings. 

I think it best to regard "Ich baue ganz... (IBG)" as a concert aria - a miniature and self-sufficient solo work of pure music.

IBG is also omitted sometimes, because it is extremely difficult to sing: impossible for most tenors. And indeed so various are its demands on tone, smoothness, agility, range and - especially - breath capacity and control; that no tenor can fulfil all of them to the highest degree.  

Tone is especially important for Mozart tenors, as the major roles (and their music) have a special quality of youthful earnestness and purity that should be innate in a singer's vocal quality. 

Fritz Wunderlich is regarded as one of the truly great tenors of the twentieth century, and this reputation is rooted in the tonal quality of his voice. Of course not everybody will like it - certainly it is very different from the most popular of great Italian or Spanish tenors (and their South American descendants) - but most agree it is the best suited to Mozart. 

But Wunderlich had other qualities as a singer. This aria shows the fluidity of his vocal production, the way his tone continued-between the words, as if the words were being shaped-from a continuous production of lovely sound. This is unusual, and often not even sought-after, among the German tradition of operatic tenors. 

Then again his breath control was superb. This is not just a matter of being able to sing long phrases, but of maintaining the quality and control of tone throughout, without diminishment. 

His agility was remarkable for someone with such a size of voice; his voice was middle-sized (i.e. middling loud) among tenors; but most tenors who are more fully able to enunciate the florid runs and arpeggios of the middle section of this aria (i.e. separating the notes*) have small/ quiet voices, and without the heroic 'ringing' tone of Wunderlich. 

As for the aria IBG itself - well it is a superb example of Mozart at his very best, and doing something only he could do. It is light and easy to enjoy, but has such a glorious sense of spirit and joy in its phrases and touches of orchestration as to reach the sublime. 

Pay particular attention to the use of woodwinds in the orchestration, and supporting the voice. Woodwind is regarded as a specialty of Mozart's orchestral work - and here you can see just why. 

*Richard Conrad was one of these: listen from 13:55. Note particularly the astonishing, genuine trill; so rare an accomplishment among tenors. 

Herbert Ernst Groh - Another glorious "German" tenor

I have long been a great lover of the German tradition in classical singing (including Austria and Switzerland), with Fritz Wunderlich being among the candidates for my favourite-ever singer, and Richard Tauber a more recent "discovery" (i.e I have only recently appreciated his genius). 

Following this line, I came upon this delightful recording of a piece by Lehar sung by Herbert Ernst Groh, who was apparently a Swiss tenor of the middle twentieth century. He has a naturally lyrical and high-lying tenor voice, with wonderfully sweet, ringing, and controlled top notes (on display at the end of this piece). 

One strength of the German tenor tradition is that even with such a light and high voice as Groh's, there is a masculine strength and virility. This seems to come from a throat-focused and "muscular" (rather than "resonance") based method of production. This is seldom the case for such types of tenor among Italians (or Russians, or English for that matter!). 

Speaking more generally; to my ear, the German and Italian (which includes Spanish and South American) operatic tradition gives an utterly different vocal sound and method, with very different strengths. 

I could not say which I prefer - and fortunately, I do not need to choose between (say) Wunderlich and Pavarotti! I certainly prefer Pavarotti in Verdi, Donizetti or Bellini; or Luigi Alva in Rossini; but clearly Wunderlich in Mozart, Weber or Handel - and Germanic singers are clearly better (usually) in Richard Strauss or (especially) Wagner. 

The point is that the operatic tradition, and indeed all classical singing, is mostly divided between German and Italian: nearly-all of the best and most-performed pieces are from these two traditions.

I say again: we are fortunate not to be compelled to choose-between them!

 

Tauber Time!

I have long been aware of the tenor Richard Tauber, and his reputation as a Mozartian; but it was only this weekend that I really appreciated what justly led to him being one of the great lyrical singers of the twentieth century. 

With my brother, and at his instigation, I watched through a film version of "Lilac Time"; which is an operetta loosely about the life of Schubert, that uses Schubert melodies for its arias and choruses. This 1934 movie was called Blossom Time, and had been adapted as a vehicle for Richard Tauber; despite that he could not act at all. 

The movie itself is hopelessly dull; with a silly script, woodenly performed (Tauber himself being the most ligneous of all); but about halfway through, "Schubert" does a public concert of some of his songs (in the plot, he is standing-in for a more famous singer - which is why the audience is initially so hostile). 

Here is the full movie on video: The relevant section runs from about 46-56 minutes. 

These small scale works demonstrate better than the operas I have previously heard, what made Tauber so special - and so famous for his technique and musicianship. Look out for the smooth legato style; by which Tauber sings continuously, with a flow of tone continuing uninterrupted between the notes. 

The musicality of phrasing, and the way he subtly points the meaning of lyrics, are both features of the German Art Song (Lieder) tradition - and show Tauber's high level of musical intelligence and training. 

He also displays the extremely difficult art of messa di voce; by which he can sustain a note while increasing or diminishing the volume, while maintaining the intonation and vibrato. 

A further exceptional aspect is when Tauber sings extremely quietly (pianissimo) - again while maintaining tone, pitch, and with clear diction.   

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven; turgid, trite and clumsy! Learning about classical music...

When I was a child, it seemed to me that classical music was all the same. It also seemed that adults who liked classical music liked it all.

So when I decided to try and appreciate classical music, in one sense I did not know where to start; in another sense I thought it did not matter.

But when I did start, I began with tackling The Great Composers. Luckily, the nearby city of Bristol had an LP library; so I began borrowing a couple of discs a week - also listening to the classical music channel on the radio (BBC Radio 3).

I soon found that I had strong preferences - not just between musical eras (I liked best the baroque and classical) but between the works of a specific composer. Indeed, I found that even the Great composers, the ones whom I fully agreed were Great, wrote a lot of dud and dull music... some more than others.

But when they wrote 'bad' stuff, the Great Composers exhibited different kinds of badness.


When JS Bach is bad, and because he wrote such a lot - a lot of it is bad, especially the vocal music for church performance; he is worthy, dull and constipated. He desperately needs an enema. When inspiration flags in the day-to-day chore of composition, Bach grinds-out the music with technical correctness and zero inspiration.

(A friend, who was one of the most musical people I have ever met - and who later worked as a BBC Radio 3 producer, used to opine that most of Bach needed 'a drum kit' to enliven it - and would start miming a driving rhythm during what he termed the 'turgid' passages.)

But genius is all of-a-piece; and the greatness of Bach (in strictly musical terms, the supreme greatness) is a product of that same earnestness and attention to detail which leads to the turgidity of many uninspired cantatas and fugues.  


Mozart is never as dull as Bach at his most constipated; but much or Mozart, indeed most of Mozart - essentially everything he wrote in his childhood, youth and early years - is trite: merely decorative patterning, which because it lacks the complexity of Bach, sometimes seem like be a maddening waste of time.

Bach may be crushingly boring; Mozart is always superficially-charming but often feels like being stuffed with chocolates.

But the very greatest works of Mozart have exactly that easy-listening simplicity which makes his lesser output seem such a trivial timewaste - when Mozart touches the heights (and nobody touches higher) the effects come from something indefinable but transcendentally beautiful that is added to, or infuses, something close to bathos...

...Well, I don't need to say more, because the essence of the genius of Mozart was perfectly captured in this scene from the movie Amadeus, written by Peter Shaffer: The relevant piece excerpted in the film is the Serenade for 13 wind instruments in B flat major K 361 - and is one of the very best - and most Mozartian - things Mozart ever did.


Beethoven was a man at his best when striving; a composer of strength, energy; we seem to feel him grappling the material into shape, and triumph at his triumphs against the odds.

There are a few places where Beethoven successfully produces relaxed, unstressed music (such as the really lovely, but uncharacteristic, Pastoral Symphony); but it is part of Beethoven's struggle that on the one hand he sometimes fails to win.

And then Beethoven just comes across as clumsy - and exhibits technical failures, ugliness, clunkiness in a way never seen in Bach or Mozart.

This is the case in many of Beethoven's attempts at writing fugues; and most obviously in much of the Ninth 'Choral' symphony, where there or examples of horribly big holes in the orchestration, abrupt gear changes, and sustained howling required from the chorus which is extremely wearing. The Hammerklavier piano sonata is similar. He was trying so very hard to be great, that it shows.

And some of Beethoven's 'light music', done as commissions and not from inner need - are like an elephant trying to dance a ballet.

His variations on God Save the Queen I recall as excruciating (and never listened again) - it was a task (probably not worth doing) calling for lightness of touch and fluency - Mozartian charm - but in trying to make something significant out of fluff, Beethoven becomes embarrassing - something Bach and Mozart never are*.

But then, Beethoven's courage in over-reaching and trying so obviously hard, made his work the main fulcrum of the classical tradition - his work changed the direction of  music and created wholly new possibilities and range in the symphony, the concerto, the sonata, even in opera. Composers lived-off Beethoven for a century, and when this impulse became exhausted, the classical tradition declined and (all but) died.

For this reason, many would regard Beethoven - for all his adolescent oafishness and buffoonery, indeed because of it - as the greatest of them all.

*NOTE: I revised this opinion when I attended a live recital by Sarah Beth Briggs, playing in a small venue; after which I said that although I had always assumed these were just a kind of over-extended Teutonic joke: "The concert revealed them to be of tremendously exciting virtuosity - consistently interesting, and thoroughly enjoyable!"  

Kenneth McKellar wafts the angels

Kenneth McKellar was treated rather as a joke in my childhood - a Scottish chap who wore a kilt and sang patriotic songs to old people...

 

But he was perhaps the finest British tenor of his generation - indeed conductor Sir Adrian Boult stated he was the greatest Handel singer of that era (Boult being the premier Handelian). But McKellar did not like the life of an opera/ oratorio singer, and quit to became a middlebrow concert artist.

What made McKellar such a superb singer was very simple: primarily the quality of his voice - as is the case with most singers - he just had a lovely clear tone. But his intonation was excellent, the phrasing was highly lyrical - although unobtrusive, and his technique was strong without being spectacular. His pointing of word meanings was also exceptional - although, again, subtle.

But the general public will always recognise a singer whose voice is beautiful - especially a tenor, which is a rare voice where vocal beauty is even rarer. There is an inbuilt thrill of being toward the limit of the natural range, with the constant danger of 'cracking' to worry about and add frisson, particularly when the singer uses an open-throated style of production, like McKellar. 

At the opposite end of McKellar's achievement is his unaccompanied version of the Irish song - She moved through the fair. This puts a microscope to his technique and musicality - it is hard to listen without tears.

This is the essence of ballad singing, and would have been loved by any people at any point in history - in ancient Greece or modern New Zealand, around the camp fire or in the Lord's great hall, in a bothy or a palace - McKellar was a true 'bard'.

Scott Joplin: the best, most original, most important composer from the United States

Scott Joplin (1867/8-1917).

There are no great US composers - no-one of the stature of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner - so we are comparing minor figures.  

Joplin was a miniaturist - but he achieved perfection, many times over, in his genre. He established Ragtime and became, without dispute, its best writer; and Ragtime led to Jazz - which was America's major contribution to world music.

Consider one of Joplin's less-well-known works, but a favourite of mine: Nonpareil. I find it absolutely and completely delightful in its gentle, lyrical fluidity! -- Great all through; but wait for the fourth and final theme with its extreme syncopated arpeggios -- so wistful, so yearning - yet so easy to enjoy!...

Glenn Gould's Bach depicts the detail of Heaven

I see now that when I was (or am) responding to Glenn Gould's playing of Bach, it is a depiction of Heaven in a very detailed sense. I can (sometimes) feel this moment by moment, each tiny decision, nuance; the lines, tones, harmonies asif happening for the first time with surprising inevitability.

I am able to re-experience Gould's ecstatic absorption in his playing, and in the music as Bach composed it - and my condition in Heaven (when I want it) will be to play like Gould and compose like Bach but in my own (unique) way; because if I can respond to it on earth, then I can do it in Heaven.

Primarily, Heaven is a place of love and relationships; but/and Heaven is a place of creativity - the creativity of making and of performance. (It is a place of all positive Goods.)

Each person's creative ability and urge is different, and changed and expanded by experience and in combination. There is no repetition; and the creating can go on for as long as wanted.

Glenn Gould and the importance of ecstatic experience

Glenn Gould - the musician - has been a significant person in my life since I discovered his piano playing in the autumn of 1978; indeed, he became an important role model at various points - despite the vast dissimilarity in our temperaments and talents.


I bought my first Glenn Gould - the double LP set of Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier, primarily because I wanted to explore Bach on piano, and secondarily because I was intrigued by the poor reviews he invariably got from the Penguin Stereo Record Guide (the nature of the criticisms made me feel that I would like what he did).

Extremely rapidly, I began to develop an interest in Gould the Man as well as the musician; or rather, something about the way he played, when supplemented by a few scraps of knowledge of his biography and opinions, was enough to convince me that here was a fellow spirit.

I first managed to glean an impression from the liner notes on the (relatively few) LPs I could buy in England, a couple of journalistic pieces; and then, on a family visit to Toronto, I bought a precious (and expensive copy) of the first biography: Geoffrey Payzant's Glenn Gould: Music and Mind.

This crystallised what it was that magnetically-attracted me to Gould: the importance of Ecstatic Experience.


In the best of Gould's performances (a lot of them) there is an intensity of absorption which is ecstatic, and which induces a similar ecstatic absorption in me. While a student I can recall listening to a short piece - a prelude for example - at lunchtime, and feeling a swirling ecstasy, at the 'top' of my mind as I walked and worked, which lasted for some hours afterwards - and which seemed to enhance my experience of life.

This fitted with an already existing idea about the aim for my life to be lived 'at concert pitch' - a phrase which doesn't literally mean what I meant by it, and which I got from a passing comment of Hendrick Willem van Loon. In 1978 I was spending more time in solitude than ever before, and I began to realise that - as Gould said  - Solitude is the pre-requisite of ecstatic experience; and which I made the central theme of my radio programme Solitude, Exile and Ecstasy -

http://solitude-exile-ecstasy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/solitude-exile-and-ecstasy.html


My central problem was that Gould's basis for ecstasy was a genius level of creative musical performance - whereas I had no basis for any such creativity. Now, it provoked in me a (rather feeble but sustained) search for some such ability - a search variously looking at music and acting, but mostly exploring writing: poetry, prose, drama and essays and also simply writing journals.

But as an immature young man I was too easily convinced of other similarities between Gould and myself; and in particular the notion that Gould's life - as I very partially understood it at that time, which was a very idealised and abstracted version of the real thing. Gould, it is now known, spent a vast proportion of time interacting with other people - more than I do, in fact; including various romantic and sexual relationships with women.

Nonetheless ecstatic solitude, in the state of total absorption during playing and creative composition, was perhaps Gould's essential reality.


In particular, I tried to believe that a solitary life of technological interaction with 'the world' would be an ideal for me, if only I had the strength of will to embrace it - yet whenever I got anywhere near this state, I found myself extremely discouraged, lapsing into an idle and disaffected and despairing condition.

Gould never gave live performances, was an expert on recording methods, lived alone, seldom went out, and was almost constantly in the presence of mass media - TV or radio were switched-on most of the time (even during sleep), newspapers were devoured, telephone bills amounted to several average person's salaries per year.

Yet/and Gould was very productive of recordings, broadcasts, writings - he was an international figure, much discussed; and a considerable influence on ideas.

The modern world now has many people who live in what is broadly the kind of way pioneered and advocated by Glenn Gould - a world in which technology is primary and human communication is primarily mediated by technology.

But now it is here, it doesn't seem much like Gould's world - in particular ecstasy, in the sense Gould meant it, seems extremely rare.


The obvious reason is that the mass of modern people are not Glenn Gould! - and the fact is that a self-created environment in which Gould thrived, and which he found conducive to creative ecstasy; is when scaled-up and applied at a population level leads the mass of Men merely into passivity, into inattentive dissipation.

What Gould thought were general principles about the world and Men, turned-out to be at most distinctive to a like-minded minority; and were perhaps even unique to him.

Thus are geniuses often poor guides to life and living! What a genius wants - and indeed needs - may be poison to people in general.



Glenn Gould's 'Solitude Trilogy' of radio programmes are well worth detailed consideration. The Idea of North is the most famous - but the Latecomers and Quiet in the Land are both considerably better. It is worth noting that despite the name these programmes are not actually about solitude- they are about life in isolated communities (Canadian far north, Newfoundland, Mennonites) that are - to some extent- cut-off from the modern Zeitgeist.  

Five Desert Island Discs

According to the rules, the castaway can take eight records, one book (other than the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already provided) and a luxury item which must be of no practical value.

The conceit is that these should sustain life on a Desert Island, in practice the idea is to make a selection which provides pegs upon which to hang a brief biography.

I insist that my interlocutor should be the programme's originator, the gentleman-enthusiast Roy Plomley (or Roy Plum-in-the-mouth as I used to quip as a teenager).



First disc: Rossini's overture to The Thieving Magpie

This was my favourite of four overtures featured on our family's one and only classical music record when I was a young child. I used to visualize the story of the opera (as summarized on the sleeve notes) as I listened - including a part which I added-in where a cat stalked the magpie. 

So it symbolizes my very happy early life, and the rhythm of its main theme - diddly dum-dum-dum daah - still has a function in being my favourite music used to wake up my wife and children - especially my daughter.

It is also a delightful piece of music; sunny, effortlessly tuneful, brilliantly orchestrated and very exciting!


Disc Two: From Steeleye Span's LP Below the Salt

One Misty Moisty Morning was the first Steeleye Span track that I heard, the first electric folk music, and it led onto the first time in my life that music became very important to me.

At the time I heard it I was, rather unhappily, 'into' underground and progressive rock music - none of which I have since regarded to with enjoyment. So I was listening to a late evening BBC radio programme which played mostly this kind of stuff - hosted by a DJ called John Peel. However, Peel had eclectic tastes and on this occasion played something from a new album by Steeleye Span: this signalled the kind of music that I had been waiting for. 

Because some time earlier I had discovered Tolkien; and that had changed my life - and the implication of Tolkien seemed very much against pop and rock music, whereas Steeleye Span sang epic ballads about elves and the supernatural, earthly songs about ordinary people such as milkmaids and sailors, and played jigs and reels and other Hobbit-like dances.

Of course, they did this with un-Tolkien-like electric instruments such as guitar, bass, violin, dulcimer... but somehow that made it better, because electric folk seemed to represent the infusion of modernity by folk influences, a saving of shallow civilization by ancient thoughts - for me, then, it seemed to be the future.

Staying with Steeleye Span I moved to explore other electric folk, and other folk music of all kinds; also I discovered medieval and renaissance music- and then Bach and Telemann as the first classical composers I engaged with, at least partly because they used the Treble Recorder which I had come to like through early music and folk.

So, this Desert Island Disc of Steeleye Span represents for me that teen period of musical exploration and expansion; during which music came to occupy a more central place in my life than before or since. And although Misty Moisty is a long way from being my favourite Span track, I do still enjoy it.

Disc Three - Mozart's The Magic Flute, conducted by Solti

I did not touch the sublime in music until I experienced opera in my mid-teens - and the first time that opera hit me with full force was in watching TV.

There were two: the funniest opera - The Barber of Seville by Rossini, in the performance conducted by Claudio Abbado and starring Berganza, Alva and Prey; and then there was Ingmar Bergman's Swedish-language movie version of the best opera/ the best piece of music ever written - namely Mozart's Magic Flute.

When I got from the record library the Magic Flute excerpts conducted by Georg Solti I felt for myself musical greatness - as in the above-linked performance of Sarastro by the gigantic Finnish Bass Martti Talvela.

This is music which Bernard Shaw, the greatest British music critic of his day (as a young man) said was the only music which it would seem appropriate to hear from the mouth of God.


Mozart's Magic Flute is both the simplest and easiest, most child-like of the canonical operas, and also the deepest, most heavenly. Through its five contrasting main characters it touches on the most important human emotions and types - Tamino, the heroic poet; Papageno, the earthy, lusty, family-loving Everyman; Pamina the innocent maiden; Sarastro the noble sage; and Queen of the Night, the beautiful, insightful, gifted, proud demon.

Bergman's film version is not just the best of all opera films, and a fine musical rendering (with good although not great singers) - but Bergman's subtle reworking of Schikaneder's inspired but chaotic libretto matches more closely the depth of the music with the words. For instance, Bergman unforgettably makes Sarastro into Pamina's father - which makes perfect dramatic symmetry.


The role of the Magic Flute in my life was spiritual, as well as aesthetic. I recognized, but struggled to make sense of, the vision of something higher and beyond. It is to my credit that despite professed atheism I did not reductively explain-away this experience of the transcendent - but unsuccessfully tried to articulate it within my covert and imprecise belief in Creative Evolution (a doctrine which was also derived from Bernard Shaw - especially as it was put-forth in my favourite play of that time: Shaw's Man and Superman, an explicitly Mozartian drama).


My enjoyment of The  Magic Flute and Barber of Seville led onto an intense period of opera exploration on LP recordings, with the vital assistance of the Bristol City library - such that over the next four year I listened to the whole of the canonical opera repertoire from the classical and romantic era. Sometimes I was seeking aesthetic experience, often it was a love of singing - especially technical aspects of the tenor voice.

Music, especially opera, became a serious activity: a religious activity. As often as not I would borrow a musical score of the opera - and read that as I listened; if not, I would follow the libretto; and while I listened my focus was intense - I would not be doing anything else.


Naturally I wanted to participate in this world of classical music, and did so in the only way I could - by singing in choirs and choruses, and on my own at home - which was unsatisfying but better than nothing. I had vague, unformed, but important-to-me notions of doing something musical more seriously at some point - perhaps being a music critic.

The best of Classical Music, especially opera, was the highest thing I knew, and I deeply wanted to be 'inside' it - somehow.

But at the same time I always held back from commitment, somehow knowing that even if the luck went my way; music could not provide me, with my nature as it was, and very limited aptitude and inadequate training, with what I sought.

Disc Four - Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, played by Glenn Gould

When I attended a comedy revue and Hamlet parody called Hamalongayorick at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1978, I enjoyed the interval music in which a jazz piano trio played Bach - and soon afterwards I bought an LP of Jaques Loussier's jazz trio (which was presumably being emulated); but also Glenn Gould playing Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Book One. 

Buying this double album was a double act of rebellion, since until then I had been a purist who insisted on Bach on harpsichord (and who indeed indeed was mildly hostile to the piano); and a rebel also in buying Glenn Gould's performance since the British musical establishment were barely aware of him, but when his performances were reviewed in The Gramophone they were usually given only two stars (out of five) due to their many eccentricities.

Insofar as the British establishment knew of Gould, they were hostile- and focused only on spiteful gossip. For example there was a false rumour that the fugues on his recording of the Bach 48 Preludes and Fugues had been recorded multi-tracked, with Gould playing one voice at a time. Of course, this was inadvertently very high praise of his ability to perform counterpoint!

But Gould and Bach's keyboard work provided my first serious, long term, and still-enduring instrumental obsession in classical music. I will listen to these pieces by Bach performedby many artists, on many instruments and combinations. And as for Glenn Gould... there were periods over the next few years when Gould - both his performances, and his example, became almost a life-line to me: a model of how I hoped, ideally, to live.

I have many memories of solitary times in various places (including Toronto - Gould's home city) listening to Gould and Bach with a luminous note-by-note intensity; projecting myself into that musical world as a place of detailed meaning and exalted inspiration.

At first I had to mail order Gould's LPs because they were not stocked by British shops, I bought some more on trips to the USA and Canada - but by the time he died four year later Gould had become almost a household name - and his star has continued to rise for many years. I even contributed a small piece to the edifice of his posthumous fame:

http://solitude-exile-ecstasy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/solitude-exile-and-ecstasy.html

I find Bach's pieces, and especially (most of) Gould's performances, are just about the only music that never stales for me, no matter how many repetations - probably because its appeal is rather subtle and deep, so I never feel close to plumbing the depths.

Its appeal is also ascetic, monastic; and this is the best music for the enjoyment of solitude - even if that solitude was a moment grabbed from an over busy life, in a tiny room in a tower block in a city... Gould and Bach can make it as deserted as an island.

Disc Five - Wagner's The Ring cycle, conducted by Solti

1979-80 was undoubtedly the apex of my musical life, and it began with listening to the complete Ring cycle of opera's by Richard Wagner - on vinyl LP and a state of the art HiFi system, with a couple of friends, following the whole thing on scores, cocooned by the sensory isolation of a soundproof room in an underground 'bunker' administered by the Music department. In between we talked and read Wagner

The impact of living and breathing the mythic world Wagner for these four days was overpowering - and the mood lasted for several weeks afterwards - I recall a walking holiday in the English Lake District with my brother when almost everything seemed to remind me of the Teutonic woods and landscape, and I was continually more-than-half-expecting to find nymphs in the streams and wicked dwarves popping out from behind rocks.

The following year I was sharing a flat with some music students, one of whom was one probably the most 'musical' person I have ever known - he later became a BBC Radio Three producer, and then bought his own concert hall and recording studio.

I attended pretty much all the classical music concerts in the city and university - selling programmes at the main concert hall to get free tickets. I sang in tow Gilbert and Sullivan shows in lead parts (high baritone/ tenor) and sang tenor in large choral works with the auditioned Newcastle Bach Choir, and in a Chamber Choir of just twelve voices which was founded by the music students (and is still going, 35 years later).

Other highlights included attending a rehearsal with Sir Charles Groves conducting Das Rheingold, giving Sir Michael Tippet a birthday present on his 75th birthday, and later attending his birthday concert in London - travelling back five hours on the overnight train to arrive in Newcastle at 05.00h and going to medical school lectures the next day after only two hours of sleep!

Outside of classical music I played folk music on the accordion - at one point accompanying an impromptu ceilidh in the depths of Northumberland playing with the Duke of Northumberland's official bagpiper, busking for the Rag charity, and playing 'Scotland the Brave' in a country dance band made up entirely of my six flatmates (accordion, clarinet, guitar, piano, snare drum and double bass) at my 21st birthday party.

I suppose this was 'living at concert pitch' - and there were plenty of other non-musical activities going-on as well; not least learning medicine; and the frenetic year was followed by a bit of a collapse of morale and optimism which took a bit of getting-out-of. Such is what happens if one comes to rely on sequential powerful external pleasurable stimuli for personal happiness - the stimuli inevitably lose their potency, and there comes a point when the dose cannot be increased any further.


As for Wagner, and the Ring cycle - I never really appreciated them again with the same depth and intensity - except for Das Rheingold, which I still regard as a magnificent and mythic achievement.

I never got beyond choosing these five Desert Island Discs, although there were supposed to be eight (according to the rule) - perhaps because, after 1980 and The Ring, no music ever had quite the same impact. 

Piano transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies

Almost everybody who likes classical music rapidly listens to Beethoven's nine symphonies - buys recordings, picks out their special favourites - and then listens then to death!

Eventually what Colin Wilson terms 'the robot' in our minds takes over listening to Beethoven Symphonies it can become hard to listen afresh.

Well, one way to renew the experience is to listen to Liszt's piano transcriptions which bring out whole new aspects of the pieces, with a wonderful clarity, lyricism and excitement.

Glenn Gould played a few, including the wondrous Pastoral (number 6) :

And some kind person has put ALL of the transcribed symphonies on YouTube played by a chap called Cyprien Katsaris who has a real feel for this music. Here is number 5 - Daa-Da-Da Daaah:

So which are my favourites?

1. Number 3 the Eroica. One of my very favourite pieces of music of all, one of the most significant pieces of music ever written. Exciting, optimistic, delicious, noble and superbly adept and innovative.

I love the first and last movements especially. (Actually this one does go significantly better with full orchestra - but I love the alternative tonic dominant end cadences on piano).

2. Number 6 the Pastoral. The first one I liked, a joy from first to last, and a wonder indeed.

These two above the rest - and all the others I like except... number 9, the contrived and clunky 'choral' symphony; which I usually don't enjoy much, except for the short tenor solo in an otherwise mostly raucous and shrill finale.

Still - in the piano transcription you can escape the endlessly shrieking sopranos...!

**

Note: In general, and with one shining exception, I do not agree with the sophisticated view that 'late' Beethoven is the best - I find the late stuff to be too constipated; Beethoven is trying too hard to overcome the loss of his lyrical facility and being too consciously experimental and innovative. The shining exception is the Piano Sonata number 32in C minor Opus 111 - the second 'variations' movement is simply one of the most wonderful things ever written by anybody; as was recognized by Thomas Mann who put a whole chapter analysing it into his novel Doktor Faustus. But as a rule I accept the common consent of the middlebrow concert-going, record-buying masses that the best Beethoven is in his 'middle' period.

Music in my early life

My first musical instrument, at age ten, was a ukelele - the one that looks like a little guitar - and it cost one pound and one shilling; bought for me on impulse by my Dad, unplanned, from a shop in Bristol. It came with George Formby guide on how to play it.

Within days or weeks my then group of friends had formed a 'pop group' which we called The Shades. We wore sunglasses (naturally!), flared trousers and brightly coloured nylon shirts with cravats.


The Shades comprised an electric and pneumatic reed organ (which sounded like a motorised accordion), a steel strung acoustic guitar, ukelele and maracas - we had no amplification.

With such a bizarre line-up, I can only attribute our success to the musicality of the organ player - who could compose, arrange, and improvise a bit; and also that we must have had nice treble voices', because it was not long before we were playing 'concerts'.

We even played at the main Church service on Sundays - which was probably a couple of hundred people; and 'entertained' the old folks at the nearby residential home.

We were canny enough to fit the material to the audience, and I recall playing and singing such contemporary worship classics as Lord of the Dance and Kumbayah in front of a full house with that nervelessness and sense of entitlement of the pre-adolescent; and an old time song called 'After the Ball' which we learned for the Old Folk.


By this time I had upgraded from ukelele to ukelele banjo - which was much louder and cost five times as much (i.e. five pounds).

Then, with terrible swiftness, we recapitulated that typical late 1960s trajectory by electrifying and becoming 'progressive'...

The old, old, and typically 'sixties, story: loss of innocence - corruption interpreted as sophistication.


We stopped calling ourselves a pop group and claimed now to be Rock - we changed our name from 'The Shades' to ...Quarternion (meaning a group of four... clever, yes? That one came from our intellectual organist); and we learned a couple of heavy numbers including the 'meaningful' (a word we actually used) Child of Time as played by Deep Purple.

We listened to the Woodstock live album. We worried about the Vietnam War - or was it the Viet-man war? We became tortured artists with a social mission and a keen interest in girls.

We plugged our instruments into on old valve radio which served as combined amplifier and loudspeaker - well 'amplify' and 'loud' did not really come into it: this particular radio was apparently designed for a wartime family to gather around and listen to Churchill's stirring rhetoric, rather than creating a 'wall of sound'.

The electronic organ remained, but we added an electric 'lead' guitar (the classic Avon budget model, purchased from the Kay's catalogue), and I switched to playing 'bass' on the lower strings of another ordinary electric guitar - the whole being sustained by the solid beat of the same old maracas rhythm section...


I quit before it got to the stage of peace-and-love-ins, Hari Krishna, drugs and overdoses.  


No, we never did get a drum kit. And no microphones. To be honest, you don't need a microphone to make your voice heard over the sound of a 1945 radiogram, a pneumatic organ and maracas.


Some years later, and mmediately before my Tolkien era there was a brief period - a few months, maybe half a year - when I began to be pulled-into the mainstream world of youth groupings and cults; and I was in danger of becoming normal.

(Normal, that is, for a thirteen year old boy at that time and place.)

There are a few residual signs of this. A single photograph of me standing in a family group with 'long' hair - that is to say, halfway down my ears, and beginning to curl-up like a watch spring. Curling-up, that is, despite my best efforts; which included washing my hair just before bed-time, plastering it down flat, then sleeping the night in a woollen balaclava helmet.

This photo also depicts me wearing a lavender coloured T-shirt and 'Loon' pants - which were denim jeans tight to the knee, then with a V-knee seam and the bottoms flaring out to 24 inches so they would completely cover and conceal the shoes - which were baseball boots.

All this indicates I was trying to be a Hairy - which was the slang term for the contemporary incarnation of 'Hippies' and devotees of 'Heavy' or Progressive Rock; and what confirms the interpretation is my head-hanging-forward, round-shouldered stance - as immortalised by Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo cartoons.


The Progressive Rock craze incorporated groups such as Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd  and (from the USA) Mountain - we listened to these (borrowed from a friend's older brother) on a little portable record player supervised by an older kid who wore black velvet 'Flares' (a less extreme version of Loons) as part of his school uniform - but who had spent so much time slapping his thighs in response to 'the beat' that he had oval bare-patches on the front of the trousers. We therefore nicknamed him Frix, which was short-for Friction Pants.

Also, I attended a few school discos in the evenings (which I never did in later years); where I stood around trying to appear sophisticated by holding my chin in my cupped hand - even though I was standing-up. This was something I had seen being done by Steve Peregrine Took - who played bongos next to Marc Bolan in the Tyrannosaurus Rex combo. I believed it made me look thoughtful, enigmatic and sophisticated; so that girls would be compelled to come up and ask me what was on my mind.


The only part of the discos I actually enjoyed was dancing to the Hawkwind single of Silver Machine with the strobe lights on - which caused a dissociative trance state.

This led to what later stood as an anomalous album by Hawkwind nestled in my accumulation of Long Playing records. I tried hard to like it, especially having spent so much pocket money on it; but something about the music, the graphics and the text actually sickened me, and after a while I just hid it away and pretended it didn't exist.


Most of the music I listed to was recorded 'live', on a tiny portable cassette tape player, from friends albums - but after a few months hard usage, these cassettes would get slower and slower, then jam solid and become useless.

I also tuned into late night radio, lying in bed with my little transistor and single earplug, when the likes of John Peel and Bob Harris would play the latest exotica from the edge of Rock - which was in these early 1970s at the most pretentious level it ever attained - as epitomised by the double or triple LP 'concept album', and the inclusion of ten minute improvised solos on bass guitar, or drums.

Heavy Rock on a tranny via a tinny earplug does sound like a contradiction in terms - the apparatus was only a small step-up from a crystal set - but this was irrelevant, because the whole thing was almost entirely a symbolic gesture of belonging to 'youth'.  


When I first read Tolkien - which was sometime after I turned thirteen, it was a turning-point for me.

Cause and effect, no doubt, run both ways - I was at this point developmentally pre-prepared to read Tolkien, and Tolkien also had a permanent effect on me.


First it was The Hobbit. I held-off reading Lord of the Rings because I liked The Hobbit so much, and resented the idea of a book which did not have Bilbo as its main hero - but in the end curiosity, and satiety with re-reading The Hobbit - pushed me on to Lord of the Rings. The rest is history.


It was at about this time, as I was walking down The Main Road of the village, that I felt a change in myself - in my mind. It resembled the description given by some patients with schizophrenia who describe being in a perplexed state for a while - knowing something is going on that concerns them, but not what it is - then suddenly, in a wave of (apparent) insight, finding everything made clear.

With me it was a bit like waking-up, becoming aware of myself and the surroundings. The dawn of self-consciousness.

This never happened again - so I suppose that this was my experience of the process of mentally becoming 'an adult' - although physically I still had a couple of years to wait. I knew at the time it was significant, and I also knew the significance - that I had 'grown-up' inside - in terms of the essential core.

Since then 'me' has always been 'me' - and my pre-thirteen year old self is somewhat hazy, somewhat alien.


Four the next four and some years at school, my inner life was dominated by Tolkien's world, and by the implications I drew from it. As well as reading and re-reading and pondering - the Tolkien interest propelled me into other fascinations. After quite a long period of moths just immersing myself in Lord of the Rings - I turned my attention outward to seek something similar, something which expanded and extended the things I drew from that world.

I decided to read adult's literature; our house was full of good books - so I asked my Father for advice. I began with George Bernard Shaw's various works beginning with Androcles and the Lion and Everybody's Political What's What, and Robert's Grave's I Claudius/ Claudius the God novels.

This was the start of the Culture Vulture years - 13-21 especially, when I attacked The Western Tradition with great energy and a retentive memory; limited (it seems) more by constraints of availability than of time.

The house was full of Good Books, there was a small (one medium-sized room) but well-stocked village library, and I was soon going into Bristol to swim among the endless stacks of the City library. I had the good fortune of a well-trained and enthusiastic English teacher from whom I learned to read Middle English and appreciate Shakespearian language - which opened-up 600 years of literature.

(I also borrowed a copy of Sweet's Anglo Saxon primer to try and add another chunk of time to my appreciation - but I could not make head or tail of it. Some people manage to 'teach themselves' languages; I have always been a mediocre linguist.)


Bristol had probably the best professional theatre outside London, and another teacher would take groups in a minibus during the evenings to see pretty much everything they did - so I began to accumulate an experience of plays - old and new.

Classical music took a while to kick-in. For quite a while I was mainly interested in Folk Music, and what little 'Medieval' (including Tudor) music I could hear - but an interest in the Recorder led to Bach and Telemann and then to the vast world of the Baroque and Classical eras (I was not so keen on later stuff, and still am not), and Gilbert and Sullivan led to Grand Opera which I would borrow in boxed LP sets from the City Library - by the time I finished school I had heard pretty much the whole of the pre-20th century standard repertoire, quite a bit of it followed with libretto or score (which could also be borrowed from the library).


All this cultural devouring was done on my own and for my own satisfaction - in some way. I didn't really have anybody to talk with about it - my best friend followed me quite a bit of the way, but he didn't want to analyse things in the way that I did. This led me to the secondary literature - criticism, scholarship, opinion, reviews and the like.

This was where I was, and am, different. Lots of people listen to classical music - but not many (except professionals) read books on the subject, its history, structure, biographies. Lots of people read novels or watch plays, not so many read about novels novels - and read plays and also literary essays - and biographies (plural) or the writers.

Clearly I was seeking more than diversion. Clearly, for me, it was a matter of trying to go inside the arts - and not simply in a practical way (by acting in plays and singing in classical pieces) but in a more philosophical way, indeed in a religious way: to get inside the world view of classical music, literature and so on, and in fact to stay there.


For me, High Culture was a religion. My hope was that my life and abilities would turn-out to be such that - eventually - I would be able to live inside literature and music, and see the world from that place; I would be inside - protected and sustained - and looking-out; and that that world would provide me with the necessities - work and love; money and status and enjoyable activity and human relationships.

There was little of this for the external observer to see - in the sense that this probably looked like a Hobby; recreation from my 'real' work of studying, passing exams and later training as a doctor.

But it wasn't - for me it was the most important thing because it was my hope of happiness, lacking any other religion it was my only hope - it was real life.


Anyway, by good sense or good fortune, I was rescued from this path by Tolkien; who triggered changes that made me step outside of the world of mainstream youth culture and into something altogether larger, more suited to my nature, and more nourishing.


Around half a decade later; I listened to Wagner's opera sequence The Ring.

It was a memorable event, scheduled to come immediately after my medical school examinations but before I got the results. My companions were two music students - and they-block booked one of the sound-proofed studios in the bowels of the music department annexe - and all four volumes of the boxed set of The Ring in the famous 1958-65 version conducted by George Solti and featuring the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

We therefore listened to these LPs on state-of the-art stereo, following the whole thing on scores, and with intense concentration. In the gaps between sections or operas, we continued to socialize, eat meals together, and discuss the operas; or else were reading books about Wagner.

Altogether it was a rather overwhelming experience, and I was dazedly wandering in a Wagnerian world for the next few months - whether walking in the Lake District, sweeping the corridors and cleaning toilets in a psychiatric hospital (as a summer job), or immersing myself in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

However, I have never done the same again - for the very good reason that the last part of Siegfried and the whole of Gotterdammerung were extremely disappointing to me as the supposed culmination of the cycle - being at a lower level musically, dramatically and spiritually than what preceded.

Indeed, my general feeling is that, qua opera, the first is the best - The Rhinegold; which has a visceral mythic power and unity. Some of the music in Valkyrie and Siegfried is more powerfully moving and appealing - but at a cost of some underlying incoherence. So my practice has been to listen to Rhinegold complete from time to time, but only to chunks of the second and third, and never again to the fourth.

Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Finzi - nice sounds but going nowhere, nothing to say.

I was at a concert the other day which had several pieces of late 19th/ early 20th English music by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Finzi - and the overall impression was of a musical tradition going nowhere - and (in my judgement) that is exactly where it went since I regard the European tradition of classical music as a closed canon.

The sounds were pleasing, and there were some nice effects. But the structure of the music had become a matter of pattern-making without forward dynamics - the music (at this point in history) had become a matter of small phrases (not melodies) which were passed through the sections of the orchestra, the voices or registers - up and down, through various keys - deftly done but why?

Bernard Shaw memorably said that an artists style was effectiveness of assertion and that was it. And attempting to focus on style in and for itself was trivial- yet this is a particular danger for music because it is hard of impossible to say in words what is being asserted - what is the meaning of music.

Yet the meaningfulness of music is vital to its artistic status. Of course it is good to have music that is pleasant, or exciting, of evokes a mood - but it is not enough to constitute an artistic tradition. Properly (in my opinion!) the canon of an art goes between the meaningful artists - those whose mastery is of meaning not style.

The reason Beethoven is so much greater than Brahms is not so much a matter of technical pioneering but that Beethoven had - perhaps above all others except Bach and Mozart - a great soul, so much to 'say' in his music, so much struggling for expression and being expressed.Whereas Brahms simply did not, and his music cannot escape from a core flaccidity.

From this perspective I would rank (for example) Michael Tippet far above Benjamin Britten because (in his early works, only) Tippet was saying something - whereas Britten had nothing to say - or at least nothing interesting. Britten was simply a shallow man of great musical ability. Tippet was a throwback to the late 19th century. 

This effectiveness of assertion is ultimately what gives music its forward impulsion. Lacking which a certain stagnant quality cannot be concealed. This differentiates - say - Richard Strauss from Mahler. For all his great qualities Mahler is stagnant, torpid; for all his vulgarities, Strauss was dynamic, energizing. And all who came after Strauss have either been less great musicians, or else tended towards stasis.

Indeed, I would regard the two supposed geniuses of twentieth century music - Schoenberg and Stravinsky - as knowing perfectly well that they had nothing to say, and knowing perfectly well their inability to escape the centripetal pull of stasis - but faking-it, disguising the fact, by explicit experimentalism.

This matter of 'having something to say' is the most subtle and in that sense subjective matter of judgement. And hearing a poor piece by a great composer can be deceptive - in most of what he wrote, Mozart had nothing to say, but was just making patterns of sound on autopilot - and the same applies to pretty much everybody.

One can only judge artists by their best work - and greatness of artistic status requires several great works or at least one very big great work (big to prove that it wasn't just a lucky fluke).

And, at the bottom line, if I personally cannot perceive the artist has something to say, then I cannot, will not, and should not grant them greatness - this is not something that generally ought to be taken on trust from other people.

Especially since most musicians are so shallow! - and this equally applies to critics and scholars. But what applies to music also applies to poetry, drama, novels... all arts.

And it is to be able and adept to perceive and to evaluate meaning of expression for oneself, that one explores and learns an artistic tradition.

Review of Switched-on Brandenburgs - JS Bach's Brandenburg Concerti done on synthesizer by Walter Carlos (aka Wendy Carlos)

Considered strictly in terms of musicality, this album contains some of the best performances of Bach's Brandenburgs I have ever heard (and I have heard a lot of them!).

Of course, some will not be able to tolerate - let alone enjoy - synthesizer performances; but the detailed musicality, fluency and detail of these performances is wonderful.

Created from 1973-1980 in the very early days of synthesizers, these were pretty-much note-by-note constructions - which explains the loving detail - but the shapeliness and fluidity of the phrasing and dynamics is impossible to explain - just a marvel.

Brandenburg One is the best all round performance of this concerto I know of - and the only fully satisfying one; the special delight of Two is the continuo baseline - which is beautifully and lucidly articulated; Three is great all-round - with a particularly fine 'improvised' second movement; Four is good; the First Movement of Five is top notch - with the cycle of fifths especially satisfying; and the first movement of Six is almost the best thing of all: really exciting (with some extra bubbling ascending sound-effect scales adding pep and verve).

Don't take my word for it: these realizations were endorsed by no less a Bach-ian than Glenn Gould. Probably they are a one-off - a never-to-be-repeated confluence of now primitive but then cutting-edge technology; and the one and only person capable of using it to create - not merely a gimmick - but real music of permanent value.